Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said that he intends to retake “the whole country” from rebel forces.
Advertisement
“We need to see an end to the bombing”.
Until two weeks ago Nubl and its neighbor al-Zahra were under siege; various rebel factions, including the al-Nusra Front and others linked to the Free Syrian Army, controlled the countryside nearby for more than three years. “If people who want to be part of the conversation are being bombed, we’re not going to have much of a process”.
Those two victories would reverse years of insurgent gains, effectively ending the rebels’ hopes of dislodging Assad through force, the cause they have fought for since 2011 with the encouragement of Arab states, Turkey and the West. The cessation of hostilities agreement falls short of a formal ceasefire, since it was not signed by the main warring parties, the opposition and government forces.
Asked if Saudi Arabia could send troops to the Turkish border to enter Syria, Cavusoglu said: “This is something that could be desired but there is no plan”.
In Nubl, al-Assad-supporting local residents are still jubilant; “God, Syria, Bashar, and nothing else”, a group of them chanted as we approached.
But by allowing fighting to rage on for at least another week, it gives the Damascus government and its Russian allies time to press on with an offensive that has transformed the conflict since the start of February. “And to adhere to the agreement it made, we think it is critical that Russia’s targeting change”, Kerry said.
“For starters, there were no Syrians at the table”, he says.
Jan Egeland, who heads the Norwegian Refugee Council, was to lead Friday’s meeting in Geneva of the task force called for under an agreement reached by the International Syria Support Group, under USA and Russian leadership.
Previously Moscow’s definition of “terrorist” in Syria has included anyone opposed to Russia’s ally, Syrian President Assad.
U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, gestures during his speech at the Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Saturday, Feb. 13, 2016.
Lavrov said the Russian air campaign in support of Assad’s military would continue against terrorist groups and denied persistent reports that the Russian strikes have hit civilian areas, notably around rebel-held Aleppo, where heavy fighting has been raging for the past week.
The clash, with echoes of superpower rhetoric during the 20th century, played out at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday even as Russia, Europe and the US say they’re seeking to end Syria’s civil war, resolve the armed standoff in eastern Ukraine and make progress toward lifting European economic sanctions against Russia.
State TV and an opposition activist group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said troops captured Tamoura on Saturday amid intense shelling and airstrikes by Russian warplanes.
“Within a week everything will have been destroyed, ” said Mohammed Najjar, a resident of the town of Marae, who on Friday joined an exodus of tens of thousands of civilians toward the Turkish border because the bombing had become too intense.
“We acted in Yemen to prevent a legitimate government from collapsing and the country being taken over by a radical militia allied with Iran and Hezbollah”, he added.
However, it is feared that the break in fighting will not hold.
Advertisement
Foreign opponents of Assad including Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been supplying vetted rebel groups with weapons via a Turkey-based operations centre.
